What’s Goin’ On? 1965-1973: When Jazz Went Pop

For mainstream jazz artists, and for jazz and pop vocalists from Sinatra to Julie London, the mid-1960s and early 1970s were a period of turmoil.  Artists like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dizzy Gillespie had spent the last decade making the most of the wonders of the long-playing record, allowing them to record tracks that didn’t have to fit on one side of a three-minute 78rpm record, and, even more importantly, to make album-length musical statements.  Their popularity had soared, their music had matured, and labels such as Verve, Prestige, Riverside, and Pacific Jazz had allowed them to experiment while, at the same time, throwing their backing behind each disc and giving it the publicity it deserved.

However, with the arrival of The Beatles, and the changes to society and culture through such things as the Civil Rights Movement, everything began to change, and even spiral out of control in the jazz world by the end of the decade.  By 1970, singers still at their vocal peak like Doris Day, Julie London, and Jo Stafford would hang up their microphones and record no more albums.  Sinatra was about to head into retirement, and wouldn’t record another album of standards for a decade.  Dean Martin’s recording career slowly ground to a halt during the 1970s.  Sammy Davis Jr got funky and groovy and, after 1974, would only make three more albums before his death in 1990.  Bobby Darin turned his back on the Great American Songbook in 1966.  Count Basie and his Orchestra would spend much of the second half of the 1960s recording three minute tracks with little room for improvisation, and these would include two albums of Beatles songs, as well as such delights as Oh, Pretty Woman and Do Wah Diddy Diddy.  Duke Ellington would record an album of songs from Mary Poppins, as well as the likes of Blowin’ in the Wind and Alfie.  Oscar Peterson would try his hand at Ode to Billy Joe and By the Time I Get to Phoenix.   Not all artists suffered in the same way.  Some would turn their back on the mainstream, and shift their focus into the likes of acid jazz, with various degrees of commercial and artistic success. 

It is, perhaps, a little too easy to blame the problems of mainstream jazz artists totally on the change in the pop music field.  The LP has been around for well over a decade by the mid-1960s, and one could argue that the songs of the Great American Songbook had been exhausted through the hundreds of albums centring on them that had been produced during that time.  Even the likes of Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald could run out of such songs eventually. 

Sinatra appears to have made a concerted effort to try to return to the singles chart somewhere around 1964, perhaps buoyed somewhat by the chart success of a song like Hello Dolly by Louis Armstrong or Everybody Loves Somebody by Dean Martin.  Certainly, there was success for Sinatra in the pop charts for Strangers in the Night, Something Stupid, and That’s Life.  Each of these successes had an album built around them, with the Strangers in the Night LP still sticking to standards for the most part, arranged by Nelson Riddle, albeit in more contemporary-sounding arrangements.  That’s Life, on the other hand, was one of Sinatra’s most disappointing albums, consisting of uninspired covers of current tunes in arrangements by Ernie Freeman.  The World We Knew, whose big selling point was the inclusion of Something Stupid, was even worse – a couple of good tracks buried among Matt Monro and Petula Clark covers, and the worst version of Some Enchanted Evening you are ever likely to hear.   

Sinatra spent the next couple of years “searching” (to use the title of a song he recorded in the early 1980s).   He recorded fine albums with Antonio Carlos Jobim and Duke Ellington, an album of country-pop called Cycles, a similar disc built around My Way, an album of songs and poetry by Rod McKuen, and a song cycle called Watertown.  For the most part, consumers at the time didn’t get excited over anything other than the Jobim album, despite the fact that there is some excellent work on each of the discs I have mentioned.  He continued a series of annual TV specials, but, even here, he could be seen wearing love beads, and trying to duet with the likes of the Fifth Dimension.  The retirement of 1971 might well have come about through desperation more than a real desire to quit.  When he returned in 1973, the emphasis was more on live shows than on recording.  During the next twenty-one years, he recorded just seven albums – and two of those were the uninspiring Duets albums.

Meanwhile, other singers were trying to “get down and with it” with varying results.  Julie London, just prior to hanging up her microphone, recorded such gems as the Mickey Mouse March, Yummy Yummy Yummy, and Quinn the Eskimo – all in her trademark “come hither” sultry style.   Mel Torme recorded a disc called A Time for Us, which included Midnight Swinger, Games People Play, and Willie and Laura Mae Jones.  He didn’t record another studio album until the mid-1970s.  That said, A Time For Us has aged somewhat better than some of the similar efforts by Torme’s contemporaries.  Never issued on domestic CD, it is available for streaming at the time of writing, and isn’t half as bad as its reputation might lead us to believe. 

Despite making three of his very best albums in the mid-1960s (The Sounds of ’66, Dr Dolittle, and a guitar and vocal album with Laurino Almeida), Sammy Davis got involved in the counter-culture, but got lost musically.  There was some success with I Gotta Be Me, Mr Bojangles, and The Candy Man, but his albums (and clothes) got more and more over-the-top, and he treated his fans to such execrable offerings as his cover of In the Ghetto.  Meanwhile, Bobby Darin turned his back on standards following the In a Broadway Bag album in 1966 – unless you want to count the following year’s Dr Dolittle disc.  After that, he went into singer-songwriter mode, writing and recording social commentary material – although it’s fair to say that those two albums are actually excellent, and now have a kind of cult following.

Count Basie spent the second half of the 1960s recording albums of standards, and albums dedicated to a particular film soundtrack.  But in each case, the tracks lasted just a couple of minutes, and didn’t show off the band to their full potential.  The great musicians didn’t have a chance to solo, and the results were easy listening discs instead of jazz ones.  He even recorded a number of songs from the pop charts, mostly in poor arrangements, and, it seems now, out of sheer desperation.   Duke Ellington also went through that phase during 1965 and 1966, but then seemed to give up trying to be relevant, and so went back to the material he did best.  There was a lengthy world tour with Ella Fitzgerald, which would yield several albums, and then he returned to writing and recording long suites, and evenings of sacred music that brought considerable acclaim, even if they didn’t set sales records.

Chet Baker was in a steep decline during the period, and recorded some utterly appalling discs during the second half of the 1960.  These included covers of Speedy Gonzales, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, Ring of Fire, and Twenty-Four Hours to Tulsa.  These albums with the Mariachi Brass and Carmel Strings weren’t the worst of it, though.  In 1968, his teeth were knocked out, and his comeback album was Albert’s House, one of the worst albums you are ever likely to hear, and he followed this up with Blood, Chet and Tears, which featured a pointless (and depressing) version of Sugar Sugar. 

Another legendary trumpeter stooped to even lower levels.  Louis Armstrong had recorded an album entitled Louis Armstrong & Friends, a rather likeable mix of old and new songs that featured Satchmo working his way through Give Peace a Chance and Everybody’s Talkin’.  It might not have been great music, but it was utterly charming.  The same couldn’t be said for his next, final album, one which consisted of him mumbling his way through country songs such as Crystal Chandelier and Running Bear.  It was probably the most horrible final album in a sparkling career that anyone could think of.

At the same time that all of this was going on, Ella Fitzgerald found herself without a long term recording contract.  In the space of six years, she went from Verve to Capitol to Reprise to MPS and on to Atlantic.  Despite this, Ella was one of the few jazz musicians that actually thrived when turning her attention to pop songs of the day – perhaps because she had always done it.  In the 1950s, she had put in credible versions of Walkin’ My Baby Back Home, Singin’ the Blues, Soldier Boy, and Crying in the Chapel.  She was one of the first major jazz artists to include Beatles songs in her repertoire, with Can’t Buy Me Love and A Hard Day’s Night both on Ella albums by the end of 1965.  In a period of about seven years after that, she recorded a country album, Christmas album, gospel album, and a rock album.  Songs likes Sunshine of Your Love, Spinning Wheel, You’ve Got a Friend, What’s Goin’ On, Hey Jude, Something, Close to You, and Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head were all added to her live performances, despite not being recorded in the studio.  Somehow, Ella took it all in her stride and, instead of rebelling against the new music and begrudgingly trying to include it in her work, she embraced it.  She didn’t view it as being beneath her, and it’s clear that she thoroughly enjoyed what she called the “now” sounds.  Her inclusion of current pop records would slowly fade out during the late 1970s, but she still had time for You Are the Sunshine of My Life and Nobody Does It Better, and a single release of two songs from Chicago. 

In the end, it was Ella’s manager, Norman Granz, that came to the rescue of the mainstream jazz musicians.  In 1972-3, he set up a label that he called Pablo, which would feature a roster of greats that included Ella, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Roy Eldridge, Joe Pass, Milt Jackson, Sarah Vaughan, and more.  Pablo didn’t have the commercial clout that Verve or Impulse had, but it was a home for great jazz musicians to make as much or as little music as they wanted, on their own terms, and without any real concerns about how many people bought the albums.  This allowed Ella to turn almost exclusively to jazz, rather than mixing it up with pop vocal albums, as she had at Verve. 

Also Granz was very keen on mixing things up – putting two unlikely musicians in a room together to see what happened.  Ella teamed up with Joe Pass in this way, and Oscar Peterson and Count Basie recorded a series of piano duet albums, despite the fact that their styles were wildly different to each other.  Basie thrived at Pablo.  For the first time in twenty years, he allowed himself to be recorded regularly in jam session environments (although the big band dates also continued), thus throwing the spotlight on his own piano playing more than had ever happened before.  Sadly, Duke Ellington passed away in 1974, but one can only imagine what he would have achieved at Pablo had he lived.

Pablo’s budget was small – the artwork for many albums was atrocious – but if I had to choose the recordings of any one jazz label to take to a desert island, it would be Pablo’s.  It was a wonderful home for so many artists entering the final phase of their careers, but who were still producing great music, and it must have seemed like a sanctuary to them after the turmoil of the previous seven or eight years.

Suggested discography:

The following albums are not necessarily recommended, but are examples of the type of output discussed in the article.

Louis Armstrong and his Friends (Flying Dutchman)

Chet Baker: Blood, Chet and Tears (Verve)

Count Basie: Basie’s in the Bag (Brunswick)

Bobby Darin: Commitment (Direction.  Under the name “Bob Darin”)

Sammy Davis Jr: Something for Everyone (Motown)

Duke Ellington Plays Mary Poppins (Reprise)

Ella Fitzgerald: The Sunshine of Your Love (MPS)

Julie London: Yummy, Yummy, Yummy (Liberty)

Oscar Peterson: Motions and Emotions (MPS)

Frank Sinatra: Cycles (Reprise)

Mel Tormé: A Time For Us (Capitol)

Winners: Shining a Light on Neglected Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums

When we see lists of the great jazz and pop vocal albums, often the same titles are featured over and over again: Songs for Swinging Lovers, Ella Fitzgerald sings the Cole Porter Song Book, Judy [Garland] at Carnegie Hall, and so on. However, there are many similar albums which, though just as good, are undervalued or neglected gems. This post shines a light on ten of them.

Julie London: With Body and Soul

Julie London is best remembered today for her 1950s and early 1960s albums featuring a small jazz combo and sultry album covers. However, there is much more to her catalogue than just Julie is Her Name and similar albums. With Body and Soul, released in 1967, is one of her best later albums, with Julie returning to her early vocal sound, but now adding a little more edge and grit to it. Here she tackles the likes of C. C. Rider, You’re No Good, and produces the sexiest version of Alexander’s Ragtime Band you are ever likely to hear!

Frank Sinatra: Point of No Return

By 1961, when this disc was recorded, Sinatra had already made several albums for his own label, Reprise, but still had one more to make under his contract for Capitol. For the occasion, he chose to reunite with arranger Alex Stordahl for an album of ballads centred around the theme of looking back, memories, and long lost loves. The album was made quickly – in just two sessions – and has a reputation of being tossed out by Sinatra with little care and attention, but the results betray none of this. This beautiful disc contains some of his best singing of the period, with definitive versions of When the World Was Young, I’ll See You Again, and Memories of You.

Ella Fitzgerald: Whisper Not

There is no doubt that the Songbook series was hugely important in Ella Fitzgerald’s career, and even milestones in the history of jazz recordings, but there is an argument to be made that they are actually not among her very best albums. The early entries, arranged by Buddy Bregman, suffer from rather square and by-the-book charts, while Ella and the band sometimes sound under-rehearsed. Ella’s best studio work at Verve was outside of the Songbook series, in albums such as Ella Swings Lightly, Clap Hands Here Comes Charlie, and Whisper Not. Whisper Not benefits from great charts by the wonderful Marty Paich, and Ella is in superlative form, singing everything from Sweet Georgia Brown through to Old MacDonald – both of which would remain in her live repertoire for two decades. There’s even the chance to hear Ella in humourous form as she recounts her liaison with a magazine salesman in I Said No.

Bobby Darin: Winners

From 1958 through to 1966, Bobby Darin made a wonderful series of albums featuring songs from the Great American Songbook, but only Winners was a jazz album. Featuring a combo led by Bobby Scott, Bobby swings his way through the likes of Anything Goes and They All Laughed, and demonstrated just how much his ballad singing had improved with his renditions of Easy Living and What a Difference a Day Makes. Bill Bailey and Minnie the Moocher were also recorded at the same sessions, but were released on singles rather than the album. Several other tracks were recorded, but remain unreleased.

Jo Stafford: Jo + Jazz

Jo Stafford seems to be unfairly neglected these days, but her recordings are ripe for rediscovery. Her best album was this wonderful disc of standards, arranged by Johnny Mandel. With a band featuring such jazz stars as Johnny Hodges, Russ Freeman, and Ben Webster, Jo is at her most relaxed, and turns in stunning performances of Midnight Sun, Just Squeeze Me, and The Folks Who Live on the Hill. Everything about the record is remarkable – including that sultry cover picture.

Judy Garland: Alone

It’s fair to say that, despite the legendary Judy at Carnegie Hall album, Capitol and Judy Garland perhaps didn’t make the most of their pairing, with too few albums being made, and not finding a formula that was both an artistic and commercial success. However, the best of her studio albums is undoubtedly Alone, an album of torch songs arranged by Gordon Jenkins. There was a risk here that Garland and Jenkins might wallow in the gloom of it all, but, despite the songs chosen, this isn’t a suicide album in the way that Sinatra’s Only the Lonely is, for example. Garland would improve upon this rendition of By Myself when she recorded it again a few years later for her final movie, but the rest of the songs here are stunning, most notably the two written by Jenkins himself: Blue Prelude and Happy New Year.

Sammy Davis Jr Sings and Laurindo Almeida Plays

It would only be a couple of years after this beautiful disc that Sammy Davis Jr would move away from singing standards and into his funky/groovy phase with mixed results. In many respects, Davis is one of the most undervalued singers, often incorrectly accused of mimicking Frank Sinatra – despite the fact that the two of them sound nothing alike. On this disc, he does something that Sinatra never did – an entire album of just voice and guitar (Davis had already made album like this, Mood to Be Wooed, nearly a decade earlier). This contains some of the best singing you are ever likely to hear, most notably on the opening Here’s That Rainy Day, Where Is Love, and Two Different Worlds.

Mel Torme: Torme: A New Album (aka: The London Sessions).

This 1977 album was Mel Torme’s first studio album since the late 1960s, and contained eight relatively lengthy tracks. Torme is in stunning form here, putting in beautiful performances of Stevie Wonder’s All in Love is Fair, Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind (which here sounds like it was written for Torme), and a wonderfully conceived medley of When the World Was Young and Yesterday When I Was Young. Torme was blessed with a voice that never seemed to age as he grew older, and this 1977 LP was the beginning of a whole new much more jazz-oriented phase of his career that lasted until his death in 1999.

Della Reese: Black is Beautiful

Della Reese’s popularity never did manage to cross the Atlantic to the UK, meaning much of her work is unknown here. Black is Beautiful, released in 1970 on the Embassy label, is a brilliant album in which she turns her attention to cover versions of then-recent songs. There are fine versions of Cycles (recorded previously by Sinatra) and If Everybody in the World Loved Everybody in the World, but the album is included in this list mostly because of the glorious lengthy cover of Games People Play and her stunning, and moving, version of With Pen in Hand. Della always gave her all, and With Pen in Hand is one of the most moving performances I have yet come across.

Johnnie Ray: The Big Beat

Johnnie Ray has a very unfair reputation these days. Many dismiss his work as over-emotional or even filled with “fake” emotion, but he was a fine song stylist, and The Big Beat (and, later, On the Trail) show him at his very best. Here he performs a series of blues and/or blues-influenced numbers, including Lotus Blossom, Everyday I Have the Blues, Trouble in Mind, and Pretty-Eyed Baby. The arrangements are by Ray Conniff and Ray Ellis. Ray’s star started to fall as early as the 1960s, although his popularity remained high in the UK and on mainland Europe, but he never managed to recreate the wonders of his best work from the 1950s.

Shane Brown is the author of Reconsider Baby: Elvis Presley – A Listener’s Guide and Directions. Bobby Darin: A Listener’s Guide.

Bobby: Directions. A Listener’s Guide. 2nd Edition

During a career of seventeen years, cut short at the age of thirty-seven, Bobby Darin did it all. He recorded well over five-hundred songs ranging from jazz and swing through to folk, rock ‘n’ roll, and virtually everything in between; was a composer of dozens of songs and film scores; played piano, guitar, harmonica, drums, and the vibraphone; was a record producer; made over two-hundred television appearances; was an Oscar-nominated actor; hosted his own variety show; and was hailed as one of the greatest live performers of his time.

Bobby Darin: Directions covers all of these facets of Darin’s career, but tells its story through his recordings, taking the reader session by session, song by song, on a journey from his first tentative session in 1956 through to his final one in 1973.

This significantly expanded and revised edition of 2015’s “A Listener’s Guide” provides a commentary on Darin’s vast and varied body of work, while also examining in detail how he, his recordings, films, and television and live performances were discussed in newspapers, magazines, and trade publications from the 1950s through to the 1970s.  The text of the second edition is around 40% longer than the first (in terms of word count) and much of that is taken up by examining nearly 600 contemporary articles and reviews, telling for the first time how Bobby’s life and career played out in the printed media, and often forces us to question our understanding of both the man and his music.  All of Bobby’s music is discussed, up to and including Go Ahead and Back Up, issued in 2018.

Perfect for both dedicated fans and those approaching Darin’s work for the first time, this is the ultimate book on the career of one of the most electrifying performers of the 20th Century.

Large format paperback (7 inch by 10 inch).  Over 100 black and white illustrations including rare record sleeves from around the room and candids previously unpublished in book form.  465 pages.

Paperback available from all Amazon sites.    Please note that there are no plans for a Kindle edition at this time.

Bobby Darin: 1971 – The Lost Year

Even for many Bobby Darin fans, 1971 is a year which is a bit of a mystery.  Darin began the year with a residency at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas.  An album was planned, entitled “Finally,” but it didn’t emerge until 1987.  Straight after the engagement, Bobby had heart surgery and laid low for next eight months or so, only appearing on TV again in September in a short, almost unrecognisable, cameo in a Jackson 5 special, and then in two acting roles in Ironside and Cade’s Country.  He finished the year with an appearance on the Merv Griffin Show.

This post pulls together some press cuttings from this “lost year.”  I have purposefully NOT included the many articles that dwelled on the surgery, and instead concentrated on other things.  Check out, though, the second and third articles, both from Variety.  In the first, they accuse some singers in Bobby’s act of walking out without warning on his show.  In the second, just days before the heart surgery and when he no doubt had plenty of other things on his mind, Bobby wrote to Variety to set the record straight.

Fort Myers News-Press, Jan 6, 1971. 

Variety, Jan 27, 1971. 

Variety, Jan 29. 1971

All of the above:  Detroit Free Press, Nov 10, 1971

Burlington Daily-Times News, March 16, 1971

Des Moines Free Press, June 4, 1971

Reno Gazette-Journal, September 10, 1971

San Bernardino County Sun, September 19, 1971

Bobby Darin on Stage – Part I

While there are a couple of sessiongraphies and discographies of Bobby Darin online, and an extensive (although still incomplete) list of his TV appearances within my own book (Bobby Darin: A Listener’s Guide), there is, alas, no list of Bobby’s on-stage appearances.   Working with newspaper archives, I have done my best to start that process, beginning with what I can find of his 1956-1959 concert appearances.  However, I am well aware that this list is FAR from complete.  Some entries have question marks beside them as I am not sure of when an residency began or ended (or both), and many performances are not listed at all.  And so if you are aware of missing performances, please message me and let me know.  If I ever do a second edition of my Darin book and include this material as an appendix, then any information given to me by yourselves would of course be noted in the acknowledgement section.  But, at this stage, that is a long way off (if it ever happens).   At the moment, I am simply trying to put a list together to share with other fans and nothing else.  I look forward to hearing from you.

1956

April 15^th         University of Detroit Memorial Hall .  Rock ‘n’ Roll Show with The Four Aces, The Four Coins, Cathy Carr etc

May 2^nd-5^th       Purple Onion, Guilford . 3 shows nightly.  Headliner

1957

April 13           Paramount Theater, Montgomery .  Bill O’Brien’s Teen Time

April 15 – ?      Mike’s South Pacific Club.  3 shows nightly

April or May    Murray Franklin’s Night Spot

May 19            Paramount Theater, Montgomery.  Bill O’Brien’s Teen Time

September 7    Paramount Theater, Montgomery.  Bill O’Brien’s Teen Time

Oct 7-12?         Gay Haven Supper Club, Detroit

October  ?         Apollo, NY.   Alan Freed’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Revue

December 6     Elms Ballroom, Youngstown.   All-Star Record Hop, with Frankie Avalon, Mello Kings etc

December 31   War Memorial, Rochester.  New Year’s Eve show with Bill Haley, The Spaniels etc

1958

June 27            Barnum Festival.  Ballyhoo show, with Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme

July 1               Broadway Theater, Philadelphia .  “Rock ‘n’ Shock Spooktacular”

July 2               Orpheum, Germantown.  “Rock ‘n’ Shock Spooktacular”

* The Spooktacular played dates for the entirety of July 1-5, but specific dates & locations unknown

July 5               Saylor’s Lake, Allentown .   Big Beat Dance, with Danny and the Juniors, The Aquatones

August 18        Johnson City Recreation Center.  Record Hop

August 24        Hollywood Bowl, LA.  A Salute to Dick Clark

August 30        Paramount Theater, Montgomery.  Bill O’Brien’s Teen Time

September 13  Elms Ballroom, Youngstown .  with Tony Pastor, Dion & the Belmonts etc

October 3        Worcester Auditorium.  “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 4        State Theater, Hartford.  “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 5        Montreal Forum, Canada .  “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 6        Peterborough Memorial Center, Canada.  Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 7        Kitchener Memorial Center, Canada.  “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 8        Toledo Sports Arena .  Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 9        Indiana Theater .  “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 10      State Fair Coliseum, Louisville.  “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 11      Veteran’s Memorial, Columbus.  “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 12      Stambaugh Auditorium, Youngstown.  “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 13      Syria Mosque, Pittsburgh.  “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 14      Akron Armoury.  “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 15      Community War Memorial.  “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 16      Catholic Youth Center, Scranton.   “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 17      Municipal Auditorium, Norfolk, VA.  “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 18      Park Center, Charlotte.  “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58”

October 19      The Mosque, Richmond.  “Biggest Show of Stars for ‘58” included Buddy Holly

November 20  Loew’s Poli Theater, Bridgeport.  “Shower of Top Recording Stars”

December 6     Chicago Opera House.  “Howard Miller’s Pop Music Concert” with Everly Bros etc

December ?      Ben Maksik’s Town & Country, Brooklyn.  Support act

1959

January 1         Civic Auditorium.  “Show of Stars” with The Platters etc

January 31 – February 2       Melbourne Stadium, Australia.  “Shower of Stars” with Chuck Berry etc

February 4-7    Sydney Stadium, Australia .  “Shower of Stars” with Chuck Berry

February 22     Evergreen Ballroom, Old Olympia.  with Little Willie John

February 26     Cottonwoods, Albany.  Show and Dance

March 1           Playquato Ballroom, Centralia.  Dance

March 9           Surf, Clear Lake, Iowa.  Special for ages 14-21

March 11         Prom Center, Minneapolis.  Teen hop with the Bellnotes

March 12         Fournier’s, Wisconsin.  In Person

March 19         Val Air Ballroom, Des Moines.  with the Bellnotes

March 22         Cinderella Ballroom, Appleton.  with the Bellnotes. Afternoon perf

April 20-at least 29th     Blinstrub’s, Boston

May 4-17         Harrah’s, Lake Tahoe.  George Burns show

June 1-?             Copacabana, New York

June ?                Sahara, Las Vegas.  George Burns show

July 10             Community Hall, North Bend

July 12             Eureka Municipal Auditorium

July 13             Klamath Falls Auditorium.  Bobby Darin and his Orchestra

July 17             Vets Memorial Hall, Petaluma

July 24             El Paso County Coliseum

July 25             Tingley Coliseum, Albuquerque

July 26             Seth Hall, Santa Fe

July 31             Cloister, Hollywood

August 8          Playboy Jazz Festival, Chicago Stadium.  with Duke Ellington & Oscar Peterson on the same bill

August 23-30   Steel Pier Music Hall, Atlantic City.  August 29 & 30 perfs were televised on WRCV-TV

September 5    Hollywood Bowl, L.A.   A Tribute to Jimmy McHugh

Sept 7-13         Three Rivers Inn, Syracuse

Sept 16 &17      West Texas Fair, Abilene

Sept 14-20?      Santa Clara County Fair.  Bobby’s particular performance date unknown

October 3        Los Angeles Jazz Festival, Hollywood Bowl

October 6-27  Sands Hotel, Las Vegas

October 28      Royal Casino, Washington

October 30-31 The Terrace, Salt Lake City

November 2    New Arena, Pittsburgh

Nov 3-5           Arizona State Fair.  3 shows per day.  9 in all.

Nov 13-15       Mosque Theater, New Jersey.  3 shows per day.  9 in all.

Nov 16 -22       Sciolla’s Philadelphia

November 26  Concord Hotel, Catskills

November 27  New Haven Arena

Dec 4-28?        Chi’s Chez Paree, Chicago.  Did Bobby really have a near-four week engagement?

Dec 26-31        Jimmy & Jack’s New Arena, Pittsburgh

 

Ella Fitzgerald’s Country Album: Misty Blue

It’s hardly surprising that viewpoints on this album vary wildly. For fans of Ella’s jazz material, it’s a waste of talent. For fans of country music, it’s a weird mish-mash of styles. But, let’s be honest, Ella had never been JUST a jazz singer. In fact, she had wrapped her tonsils around country music before, such as A Satisfied Mind back in 1955, and much of her material from the early to mid-1950s wasn’t jazz either, with her tackling the likes of Crying in the Chapel and Soldier Boy during those sessions. And, throughout the 1960s, she incorporated some of the “now sounds” (as she called them) into her albums and concerts, including Beatles tracks and the likes of Walk Right In. So, really, this country album didn’t come completely out of left-field.

It certainly was a strange choice of album as her first project for Capitol, but that doesn’t mean it is bad. In fact, it’s hugely enjoyable for the most part. Ella’s country is not dissimilar in sound to that on Bobby Darin’s You’re the Reason I’m Living album – and by that I mean that it takes country material and melds it with big band instrumentation. The songs are well-chosen too, with Ella given the chance to sing some rather feisty lyrics such as “This Gun Doesn’t Care Who It Shoots,” and there is also a wink and a nudge on a few tracks too, such as Evil on Your Mind and Don’t Let That Doorknob Hit You.

Ella was probably never in better voice than in the mid-1960s. On ballads, she had a fuller sound that was silky smooth, but she was also adding a kind of soul-like rasp to her voice on bluesier and upbeat material. The best songs here are those written by Hank Cochran – It’s Only Love and Don’t Touch Me, with Ella’s performance of the latter being truly beautiful. Also listen out for the phrasing on Born to Lose – absolutely stunning.

These songs might not have been her natural “bag” but they are beautifully recorded and Ella throws herself into this (on the face of it) unlikely project with great enthusiasm. She would continue to explore new avenues during the late 1960s with an album of hymns and spirituals, and even dalliances with rock on her two albums for Reprise – and that’s not to mention her reinvention of Hey Jude on the under-rated Sunshine of Your Love LP. In concert she would wail her way through Spinning Wheel, and even enter protest territory with What’s Going On (recorded live twice) and her own Capitol single It’s Up to You and Me – her self-penned response to the killing of Martin Luther King that has sadly never made it to CD.

Bobby Darin at 80: 10 Key Tracks

May 14, 2016 would have been the 80^th birthday of Bobby Darin.   In celebration, here is a look at ten key (although not always obvious) recordings from the five hundred or so that Bobby made between 1956 and 1973.

Silly Willy (1956)

Some singers find their voice the very first time they set foot inside a recording studio, and record some of their greatest work during their early years.  Elvis Presley is probably the best example of this, recording the classic That’s All Right at his very first professional recording session.  This was not the case for Bobby Darin, however.  In fact, it was over two years after he entered a studio before he recorded his breakthrough single, Splish Splash.  Prior to that, Bobby seemed to be constantly in search of his own sound, with many of his early records adopting the styles and mannerisms of other singers of the period.  He needed something to make him stand out from the rest of the would-be pop stars trying to carve themselves a career in the mid-1950s, and that something was his own identity.  Nowhere is this more noticeable than during the eight sides he recorded during his short tenure with Decca.

Recorded at his first session was a song that saw Bobby turning his attention to the novelty rock ‘n’ roll material with which he would eventually find stardom.  Silly Willy is no Splish Splash, however.  Much of the problem with the song is the awkward transitions between the two different tempi and rhythms that the song employs.  It is a shame, for there is much to enjoy in Darin’s performance, but the various elements simply do not gel together in the way that they should.

Silly Willy is interesting, however, in that it provides us with our first audible clue that Bobby wanted to be more than just a pop singer.  The number has its roots in a 1920s risqué jazz number about a drug-addicted chimney sweeper called Willie the Weeper which, in turn, provided the inspiration for Minnie the Moocher, which Darin would record a few years later.  The lyrics of the first verse of Silly Willy and Willie the Weeper are so similar that it’s clear that Bobby knew the more obscure song and was drawing from that rather than the better known Minnie the Moocher.  The first verse of Willie the Weeper reads:

Have you heard the story, folks, of Willie the Weeper?/Willie’s occupation was a chimney sweeper/He had a dreamin’ habit, he had it kind of bad/Listen, let me tell you ’bout the dream he had.

Silly Willy barely changes the lyrics at all:

Listen to the story about Willy the Weeper/Willy the Weeper was a long time sleeper/He went to sleep one night and dreamed so bad/Now let me tell you about the dream that little Willy had.

What is remarkable here is not the fact that Bobby Darin “borrowed” lyrics from an older song (this was not a rare occurrence in pop music at the time), but that he knew the lyrics to Willie the Weeper at all.  Most of the well-known recordings, such as those by Louis Armstrong and George Lewis, were instrumentals – possibly with good reason due to the song’s repeated references to “dope” and taking “pills” – and so one has to wonder where Bobby heard the lyrics in the first place.  If nothing else, it shows just how wide his knowledge of popular music was even at the tender age of nineteen.

Softly as in a Morning Sunrise (1958)

Bobby struggled to find a breakthrough hit following his move to ATCO in 1957, but eventually made the big time with Splish Splash.  However, never one to rest on his laurels, he wanted to try new things and avoid being pigeon-holed as just another rock ‘n’ roll singer.  In late 1958 he recorded his That’s All album, which would feature the track which would become his signature song, Mack the Knife. 

On the same album was Softly as in a Morning Sunrise, taken from a 1920s operetta called The New Moon.  The treatment it receives here is raucous and brash, both in the arrangement and the singing, and it’s clear that the whole point is that it is going against how the song was originally conceived and normally performed (particularly within a vocal arrangement).

There is a possibility that Bobby got this idea from the 1954 Hollywood biopic of the song’s composer, Sigmund Romberg.  In Deep in my Heart (Stanley Donen), Romberg, played by José Ferrer, attends a show in which the song is being performed and is mortified at the up-tempo, crass arrangement of his beloved composition.  There is more than just this casual link between the two performances.  For example, towards the end of the song, Bobby changes the lyrics in exactly the same way as they are in the film sequence by repeating words:  “Softly, softly, as in an evening sunset, sunset.”  But he goes yet further, breaking the “fourth wall” and talking to arranger/conductor Richard Wess, telling him “the title of this tune is Softly, so can we do it that way please?”  He then proceeds to sing it louder than ever.  It’s a brash and cocky move, totally breaking with convention, and the kind of thing which separates him from Sinatra, who treated his material somewhat more reverently.

Sinatra did come close, however, on the rarely heard attempt-at-a-hit Ya Better Stop, recorded in 1954, in which he shouts as the song starts to fade: “Oh here now, this ain’t gonna be another of those fade-away records.  Get your grimy hand off that dial, man!”  The chief difference here is that Sinatra waits until the song is over before his interjection, whereas Darin is making out that he has almost no regard for the song itself in the way it was originally intended.  That, no doubt, was not the case, but Romberg was probably turning in his grave despite the fact that Bobby had just exposed his relatively obscure song to a new generation. Ya Better Stop remained unreleased until 1978, nearly twenty years after Bobby’s recording of Softly as in a Morning Sunrise.

Milord (1960)

Bobby wasn’t just recording in different genres, he was now recording in different languages!  Only one song appears to have been recorded at the session on June 20, 1960, in New York, but it’s a Darin classic, albeit one that is not particularly well-known.  A year earlier, Bobby had appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on the same bill as Edith Piaf, and here he takes one of her signature songs and turns it into a tour-de-force.

Milord is one of Bobby’s most infectious recordings, and there are few recordings within the Darin legacy where his enjoyment of singing a particular song jumps out of every groove as much as it does here.   He sings the entire number in the original French, although he changes a few words to account for the song being sung by a man instead of a woman.  There is a Gallic element to the orchestration thanks to the use of the accordion, but the arrangement gains momentum with each verse, until Darin lets loose completely during the instrumental, singing along and clearly having a ball.  The only fault, perhaps, is that it’s all over in two minutes – but what a great two minutes!

Despite the wonderful singing and arrangement, ATCO clearly didn’t quite know what to do with a song sung completely in French, and it languished in their vaults for four years before they released it as a single, reaching #45 in the U.S. charts during a period where Darin was having something of a lull when it came to chart success.  The Daily Mirror in the U.K. called the release “interesting, but I can’t see it tearing the charts apart.” Likewise, the Australian press weren’t too excited either, saying “as great an entertainer as Darin is, he doesn’t inject into the number the mood and feeling that Piaf did.”

It’s hard to tell what the critics were listening to, but it certainly didn’t seem to be Bobby’s version of Milord.

I Got a Woman (1961)

Darin had already recorded I Got a Woman at the jazz combo sessions nearly two years earlier that had produced the Winners album (that version remains unreleased), and also for the Darin at the Copa album.  However, he tackled it again for his Bobby Darin sings Ray Charles LP – for a whole six and a half minutes.  The song starts off in normal fashion, but then Bobby keeps the “alright” ending of the song going for over three minutes despite it being basically the same line repeated over and over again.  This is Darin at his most self-indulgent, and yet there is still a point to it, for he finds almost every possible variation of singing that line during this extended coda which listeners are going to love or tire of quickly and simply hit the “next” button on the remote control.  There is also a rawness here, particularly with this song.  During the main section, he reaches for notes and misses them, but it doesn’t matter – Darin is showing us that this music is all about “feel” and not about technical perfection, and he hits that message home time and again during the course of the album.

I’m on My Way, Great God (1962)

In July 1962, Bobby started work on his first album of folk songs.  Earthy wouldn’t simply tap into the then-current vogue for folk music, though, but would instead pull together both traditional songs from around the globe as well as newer compositions written by the likes of Tom Paxton.

I’m on My Way Great God is the first of the spiritual/gospel songs on the album, and it is quite an epic.  It starts off with minimal instrumentation, with the arrangement growing subtly with each subsequent verse.  The song also utilises a choir, but here they are not at all intrusive in the way that they are on the big band album recorded during the same series of sessions.  It’s interesting to note just how controlled Darin’s vocal is, starting off at barely a whisper, and then slowly but surely getting more and more powerful over the four-and-a-half minute running time.  Bobby, no doubt, was aware he had a showstopper on his hands, and included the number in the folk section of his live concerts through 1963 as well as when he appeared on The Judy Garland Show filmed just days after the assassination of President Kennedy.

Gyp the Cat (1964/5)

In 1964, Bobby couldn’t get a hit record for love nor money.  In September 1964, he made his first attempt at recording his own composition Gyp the Cat, a clever pastiche of Mack the Knife, this time about a thief, and using a similar melody to the Kurt Weill song.  As with Mack the Knife, the song tells a story, and the arrangement works in the same way, with it gaining in intensity with each successive verse.  It’s a lighter affair lyrically, with a nice twist in the final verse, and would have been a better choice of single than Hello Dolly which was released instead.  Despite the British Invasion, there was clearly still a place in the singles charts for this type of material, as Armstrong’s Hello Dolly and the Darin-produced Wayne Newton hit Danke Schoen had shown.  The 1964 version of Gyp the Cat remained unissued until thirty-odd years later, with a 1965 recording of the same song issued as a B-side.  It was something of a waste of a fun Darin original, in his signature style, and showing that he could poke fun at himself through a pastiche of his earlier hit.

We Didn’t Ask to Be Brought Here (1965)

We Didn’t Ask to be Brought Here (recorded just after he returned to Atlantic in 1965) was a fine, adult, contemporary pop song with a clear message and, as such, was Darin’s first overtly political single.  While there were no specifics mentioned within the song, it would have been clear to listeners at the time that the song was referring to events such as the Vietnam War and the Cold War when he sings “the world’s gone mad.”  Billboard called the single “his greatest chance for the charts since Mack the Knife.  In the current commercial protest vein, he excels with his own composition backed by a hard driving dance beat.”  Sadly, very few got to hear it, and the single sank almost with trace.  One has to wonder if both Darin and the advertisements for the song had something to do with it.  An original advert is shown in Jeff Bleiel’s book, That’s All, and tells the reader that the song has a “great message” but then has a picture of Darin in a suit and tie – hardly the image associated with someone singing a protest song in 1965. The image and the content were simply an anachronism.

If I Were a Carpenter (1966)

Bobby Darin told many times in concert a humorous story of how a couple of agents came to see him in 1965 or 1966 and offered him songs by the likes of John Sebastian and Tim Hardin that he rejected and that went on to become hits.  Quite how much of the story is true is debatable, although it was no doubt at least partly based in fact, even if it had been somewhat embellished.  “When they came to me the next time, I was lying in wait for them,” he told an audience in 1973, and the song he ended up recording was If I Were a Carpenter, a number which would introduce yet another phase in the career of Bobby Darin.

Despite the fact that Darin spent time trying to ease the rumours that Tim Hardin was annoyed at him “stealing his song,” the original stories still make for good copy.  Fred Dellar, in the liner notes for the CD release of the If I Were a Carpenter album, repeats the story that Hardin was “incensed” that Darin had “copied Hardin’s own vocal approach.”  He even quotes Hardin as saying “he played my version through his headphones, so that he could copy my phrasing.”  While Darin was clearly inspired and influenced by the original Tim Hardin demo, he certainly wasn’t listening to it through headphones when he recorded the song as he makes a number of small, but not unimportant, changes to both the melody and the timing.  The bridge section, for example, is sung faster in Hardin’s version, but in tempo in Bobby’s.  Meanwhile, certain notes are exchanged for others in Darin’s rendition, particularly in the second verse where this happens on multiple lines.  Finally, Bobby’s vocal is far more intimate, more delicate, than Hardin’s.  Somehow, from somewhere, he had found yet another new voice that had only ever been hinted at over the previous decade.

Me and Mr. Hohner (1969)

In 1968, Bobby moved away from traditional record labels and set up his own:  Direction, where he would spend the next two years recording songs of protest and social commentary.  Darin’s second album for the label opens with Me and Mr. Hohner, and finds Darin talking, almost rapping, the lyrics, producing a sound that was considerably ahead of its time.  At face value, this is a song about police harassment in general, but the references to “South Philly” at the end of each verse makes it clear that this is Darin’s view of Frank Rizzo, who was Police Commissioner in Philadelphia at the time.  His obituary in the New York Times states that Rizzo was often viewed as a “barely educated former police officer who used a hard line and tactics bordering on dictatorial to suppress opposition and keep blacks out of middle-class neighborhoods.”  The 1991 article goes on to say that “Mr. Rizzo personally led Saturday-night round-ups of homosexuals and staged a series of raids on coffee houses and cafes – saying they were drug dens.”  This, together with the multiple charges against Rizzo (all of which were dropped) regarding the beating of suspects, fits in with the picture the song paints of a young man and his harmonica “not doing nothing to no-one/When a squad car stops and out jumps cops/‘You’re one of them if I ever saw one’” and the fear at the end of each verse of getting a beating.

The track is brilliantly executed, with a fine production and Darin’s vocal sounding completely natural despite the nature of it.  Billboard called it “another strong message lyric set to an infectious beat [with a] top arrangement and vocal workout.”  Later in the year, Variety stated that Bobby was told he couldn’t sing the song during his appearance on This is Tom Jones (he sang Distractions instead).

Happy (1972)

Finally, we come to Bobby’s last single, which was released in December 1972.  The effect of television appearances could be seen when Happy was sang twice on Darin’s TV series in early 1973, and the song went on to reach #67 in the US charts.  That may not sound much, but it was his highest charting single since The Lady Came from Baltimore in 1966, and his first to chart at all since 1969.  Happy is subtitled Love Theme from Lady Sings the Blues, but this is a little confusing.  The song itself never appeared in the film sung by anyone.  Indeed, it hadn’t even been written at the time of the film’s release.  Instead, the song simply borrows a melody from the incidental music in the film and adds lyrics to it – much like Somewhere My Love (Doctor Zhivago) or Stella By Starlight (The Uninvited).

Darin turns the song into an epic.  There is a huge orchestral arrangement but, even when the full force of the band is heard during the bridge section, Bobby shows that he can compete and he belts out this section before turning on a dime to a much softer voice for the end of the vocal.  The single clocks in at just under four minutes, but the version released on LP is two minutes longer, although Darin doesn’t sing a single note extra.  Instead, the extra two minutes are an extended orchestral outro, with backing vocals at the very end adding a gospel feel to the proceedings.  The number and production were atypical Darin, but show that Bobby could still deliver even this late in the game.  Billboard called the single “one of Darin’s finest performances on record.”

(Bobby Darin: A Listener’s Guide is available in Kindle and paperback format from Amazon)

 

2016: Bobby Darin at 80

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post detailing how badly 2015, the year in which Elvis Presley would have turned 80, had been handled by both his record label and the Presley Estate.  The only major release was centred around a gimmick rather than the great music that Elvis made during his lifetime, and that great music was largely ignored for the entire year.  In 2016, Bobby Darin would have turned 80, but what should we be allowed to expect?

Less than a decade ago, all but three or four of Bobby Darin’s original albums were available on CD.  Now, as 2015 draws to a close, less than half a dozen are available as physical product in America.  Not even That’s All or This is Darin are available from Bobby’s own label, although public domain copies can be imported infrom Europe.  In Europe, the situation is somewhat better thanks to Warner’s release of ten of the ATCO albums spread over two 5CD boxed sets.  But, after the ATCO period, the situation is just as bad as it is in America.

“How did this happen?” is a question that many Darin fans are no doubt asking.  From the mid-1990s, Bobby’s star was once again in the ascendency, with well-advertised compilations of issues of unreleased material appearing with great regularity.  And then, without warning, it stopped.  I say “without warning” but that isn’t strictly true.  There were signs that those behind Bobby-related releases were cutting corners or, perhaps, just getting a bit bored.  Aces Back to Back was released with quite some fanfare (even a single to promote it), but was in reality a hodge-podge of performances that didn’t gel together and about which we were told absolutely nothing in the poorly-conceived booklet.  The 2006 DVD Seeing is Believing contained some great performances but seemed to be edited together by someone using Windows Moviemaker, and with no thought as to which performance should go where.  After that, it was not only a further seven years before a release containing “new” Bobby Darin material, but during that time there was not even the appearance of an official compilation to celebrate what would have been his 75th birthday.

The consequences of all this is that Bobby, despite being highly thought of by critics and having an extremely loyal fan-base, is now struggling to be remembered by the general public beyond half a dozen key songs.  Alas, that is what being forgotten about by your label and, seemingly, Estate does for your popularity.  2016 is the year that can change all of that.  Not only would it have been Bobby’s 80th birthday, but it is also the 60th anniversary of his first recordings for Decca.  Whether we can actually expect anything from record companies and/or the Darin Estate to mark these occasions in style, and to get Bobby Darin talked about and noticed once again, is very much up for debate.

One would like to think that, at the very least, there could be a compilation put together of Bobby’s hits and signature songs that could be advertised on TV, radio and the internet.  This might contain nothing new, but at least it would get Bobby’s name out there again.   But what else could we, or should we, expect?  Frankly, going by the last few years, perhaps we should set our expectations low and hope to be surprised.  The Bobby Darin Show series from 1973 was decimated when released on DVD.  Yes, an apology of sorts was issued by the Estate a month after the release, but one would assume they would have seen the planned DVDs and the packaging they criticise some time before release date and could have had things improved or changed if they really wanted to.  It is, after all, The Bobby Darin Testamentary Trust that is credited on the DVD cover.  Moreover, it took some twelve years from the discovery of the so-called Milk Shows to their arrival on CD.  Another sign we should perhaps not hold out breath for a special release next year.  We have been told for some time that a project is in the works containing the previously unreleased Manhattan in my Heart and Weeping Willow, but there appears to be no sign of such a project as yet.  Also, in the May 2014 apology about the television series DVD, we were told about a remastering and restoration of the final concert-style episode of Bobby’s TV series that would be released – and, more than eighteen months later, there’s been no sign of that either.

Could we possibly dare to hope  that a set of rarities might appear to celebrate Bobby’s 80th?  There are, for example, a number of items that have never appeared on CD – such as the studio recording of Swing Low Sweet Chariot and the songs from the 1972 album that were not released as singles.  And how about the title song from That Darn Cat, a song Bobby recorded for the Disney film but which was never released on record.  A four-song live set from Australia in 1959 was released on a bootleg a couple of decades ago, but has yet to be released officially – and neither has the Something Special LP, which was the soundtrack to the BBC TV special recorded in 1966.   What’s more, I Don’t Know How to Love Her, recorded at Motown in the early 1970s, was heard on a BBC radio show a year or so ago but remains unreleased – as do a number of other tracks  recorded during the same period that are still in the vault (and some of which have been heard).  Can we not assume that there are more songs on tape from The Troubadour in 1969 than the four released so far?  And how about at least the audio of some of the songs excised from the TV show DVD and from the Bobby Darin Amusement Company series that came before it?

A release of Bobby Darin “discoveries” might not set the world afire but, with a decent compilation of Bobby’s greatest moments to accompany it, at least Bobby’s popularity/recognition might once again start to rise – and this without even entering the realms of producing an in-depth documentary, or a book of unreleased photographs and other documents, or perhaps a collection of Bobby’s guest appearances on TV variety shows.

Many will, no doubt, say that none of this will ever happen – and they are probably correct – but it is also time for Darin fans to start asking the question of why none of this will happen, even if the answers might well complicate the situation even more.  No matter how talented the star, if their work is largely unavailable and their legacy rarely brought back into the public eye, that star will, alas, shine less brightly than it needs to outside of the fandom.  Fans do what they can to stop that from happening, but it also perhaps time to start demanding more from the powers that be that can and should be making a difference.  Here’s hoping that 2016 will bring about changes in how Bobby is handled that means these questions don’t need to be asked and that these demands don’t need to be raised.  But, I confess, I’m not hopeful. 

Bobby Darin: A Listener’s Guide – Now available

I’m pleased to announce the publication of my book Bobby Darin: A Listener’s Guide, which is available in Amazon stores in paperback and Kindle formats.

Bobby Darin made more than 500 recordings during his short lifetime and this book examines all that have been released, from those he made during his short tenure at Decca to performances from the 1972-3 TV series.  The book works through Bobby’s recording career, session by session, song by song, providing a new commentary on the songs and their performances.  Alongside this runs the story of how Bobby and his recordings and performances were discussed in newspapers, magazines and trade journals at the time, referencing over 200 articles.  The book runs to 346 pages, and includes appendices covering a lifetime discography, a list of Darin compositions performed by other artists, the most complete list published to date of Bobby’s television appearances, and more.

Please note that the “see inside” preview feature on the Kindle product page on Amazon currently contains an error involving font sizes (switching back and forth from one to the other).  The book has been downloaded to 2 different Kindle devices, the PC Kindle app, and the Kindle app for Android phone, and the issue is NOT repeated on any of them. Amazon are working on correcting the preview page.

Bobby Darin: The Milk Shows

The last in the series of blog posts reviewing Bobby Darin recordings.

March 1963 saw the announcement that Bobby would “be featured in a Monday through Friday program series on Radio Station WIBA.  The program titled Bobby Darin will be heard at 3.33 p.m. and will feature a talk (sic) and music by this young star, designed to appeal to both adults and teenagers – not rock and roll music.  The Bobby Darin show will be sponsored by the American Dairy Association.”[1]

These five-minute radio programmes became known as The Milk Shows.  Darin would record the shows at Capitol studios, and they would then be overdubbed with fake (very fake) applause, thus giving the impression that the songs were being performed live – although how many listeners were fooled is debatable.   The tapes of these shows were found back in 2002, with a trio of songs being released on the Aces Back to Back release in 2004.  After this, there was an inexplicable delay of another ten years before the release of a double CD set containing more than ninety tracks.

If you’re wondering how ninety tracks fit on a mere double CD set, then it’s worth stating that no songs featured in the series was recorded in full (with one exception).  Each song was a bite-size version lasting, in most cases, sixty to ninety seconds.  This in itself makes the release a unique listening experience, but it is also worth remembering that Darin was accompanied by just a jazz quartet featuring Richard Behrke, Ronnie Zito, Milt Norman and Billy Krist – no matter what the song.

The material that Darin chose to record for The Milk Shows cover the whole gamut of his repertoire, from renditions of rock ‘n’ roll hits Splish Splash and Multiplication to a wide variety of standards and show tunes.  Some of the songs had been recorded by Bobby previously for record release, and those numbers often get given a different feel here thanks to the stripped back instrumentation.  Other tracks are ones that Bobby never did record in a studio, and so these versions are the only ones we have.

The recording dates for these shows are unclear.  The news article quoted earlier is from the beginning of March 1963, suggesting that the recordings probably began around the same time.  Whether all tracks were recorded at once or over a longer period is not known, although it’s worth noting that, when Darin draws upon songs he had already recorded, all of them date from studio sessions before March 1963, thus suggesting that The Milk Shows were recorded over a short space of time during that spring and/or summer.  For example, while You’re the Reason I’m Living (and songs from that album) are included here, Eighteen Yellow Roses and songs from that album are not.  There are a couple of exceptions.  Days of Wine and Roses would be recorded in 1964 for the Hello Dolly to Goodbye Charlie album (in a very different arrangement), and The Sheik of Araby was recorded in late 1965, but remains unissued.  However, Darin dates The Milk Show version of Days of Wine and Roses by referring to it as “this year’s” Academy Award-winning song, thus dating the performance to 1963, but sometime after the ceremony that took place on April 8.

While these recordings are to be welcomed, it should be mentioned that Darin is not always in the best of voice, and certainly doesn’t always give a song the care and attention he would for a commercial recording.  The very first song on the double CD is a case in point.  Too Close for Comfort, from the musical Mr Wonderful, hardly gets the album off to an auspicious start, with Bobby’s voice sounding croaky and he hits a number of bum notes along the way.  Things improve somewhat for Pennies from Heaven, which gets a nice run-through, but the big finish doesn’t quite come off in the way it normally would on a Darin recording.  Part of this is due to the low-key performances, but there is also a sense here that some of the songs simply weren’t rehearsed enough.  Around the World is an example of this.  It gets an upbeat, jazzy rendition but there are points when Bobby lags behind the beat and others where he seemingly makes the melody up as he goes along.

Elsewhere, it seems to be simply a worn-out voice that is the problem.  Climb Every Mountain starts off well, and has a better arrangement than the outing it would receive ten years later on The Bobby Darin Show TV series, but the climax of the song shows that Darin’s voice is shot to pieces.  Perhaps this was one number that should have remained in the vault.  Climb Every Mountain isn’t the only song here that wouldn’t be given a studio recording but would appear years later.  Sixteen Tons was given a brilliant (and lengthy) reworking during an appearance on The Jerry Lewis Show in 1968 and would emerge again on The Bobby Darin Show (although not included on the DVD of that series).

Unsurprisingly, some of the most interesting songs here are the ones that Bobby didn’t record or perform elsewhere.  The choice of material is also intriguing.  A number of tracks are songs associated with Bing Crosby, for example, including I’m an Old Cowhand (during which Bobby can’t resist throwing in some impressions), Sweet and Lovely and Too-Ra-Loo-Ra Loo-Ral which gets crooned nicely in Darin’s softest voice.  Less surprising perhaps are the series of tracks associated with Al Jolson, including April Showers, Rock-a-Bye Your Baby, and Let Me Sing and I’m Happy.  April Showers is particularly good, and reminds us just how good a ballad singer he was during this period, particularly when not bogged down by the choir that appears to pop up at every opportunity when the tempo falls below a certain number of beats per minute on the Oh! Look at Me Now and You’re the Reason I’m Living albums.

Some of Bobby’s biggest hits get quite a makeover in this new setting.  Lazy River, for example, is taken at an ultra-slow pace and is given a bluesy vocal that has little of the show-stopping nature of the studio recording. Splish Splash, on the other hand, seems a little bizarre when backed by a jazz quartet, although Dream Lover doesn’t suffer in the same way – in fact it works better here than with the big band on the Darin at the Copa album.  You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby is also heard in a very different arrangement to the hit twist version.  This swing version is just as credible, and makes one wish that Darin had recorded it again in this style at a later date.   Interestingly, Mack the Knife isn’t sung here, but is just used as an instrumental theme tune for the radio show.

It is often the ballads that get given most care and attention by Darin in this set of performances.  For example, Autumn Leaves is given a Latin rhythm and is beautifully sung, and a full studio recording of this lovely song would have been very nice indeed.  Also given a Latin feel and a similar vocal is the song which is, arguably, the greatest written by Irving Berlin, How Deep is the Ocean, as well as Fools Rush In.  The use of these Latin rhythms is interesting as Darin rarely employed them elsewhere, although, going by these brief outings, an album in the bossa nova style would not have been a bad move.  Elsewhere, I’ll Be Seeing You is given a gentle swing rhythm, but Darin sings it as a ballad, mostly singing it in his subdued voice which is most effective.    Also of note is a sincere rendition of La Vie en Rose.  Perhaps the most bizarre ballad performance finds Bobby reciting the lyrics of Days of Wine and Roses while the tune is played in the background.

A number of songs from the mammoth January 1963 sessions appear here.  Hello Young Lovers and This Nearly Was Mine are given renditions similar to their studio counterparts, whereas the arrangements of I Ain’t Got Nobody, Please Help Me I’m Falling and Be Honest With Me are simplified somewhat and benefit from the lack of backing vocals – although Be Honest With Me still sees Darin adding the same mannerisms to his voice as he does on the You’re the Reason I’m Living LP version.  What Kind of Fool am I is given a lightly swinging version here that arguably is more effective than the more traditional performance recorded a few months earlier.  What is particularly interesting is how Bobby approaches the end of the song in a completely different way.  There is no big finish here – instead, he sings the final lines is his softest voice, almost a falsetto, and it is just as effective as the traditional ending.  During the Broadway album sessions, Darin had recorded Tall Hope from the musical Wildcat.  Here he turns his attention to the most famous song from that show, Hey Look Me Over.  The normal march rhythm of the song is cast to one side in favour of a straight-ahead jazz approach, but it all seems a little half-hearted, and isn’t helped by a rather inept and unenthusiastic attempt at scat singing.

Alongside the well-established standards are some of the novelty songs that Darin appears to have had a genuine affection for given that the album of duets with Johnny Mercer is filled with such material.  Here we have Manana, co-written by, and a hit for, Peggy Lee, for whom Bobby often expressed his admiration.  Darin puts in a great performance here, with his voice sounding stronger that on many of the other tracks.  While Manana is fun, a number like Mairzy Dotes and Dozy Doats is an example of a novelty song that is simply tedious.  ‘A’ You’re Adorable gets a nice run-through, as does Row, Row, Row, which includes the verse which is not featured on the recording with Johnny Mercer on the Two of a Kind album.

Ironically, the best song from The Milk Show recordings is All the Way, released on Aces Back to Back but, oddly, not included on The Milk Shows set.  Quite why this lovely performance wasn’t included the second time around is a mystery, not least because it’s the only  full-length performance in the ninety or so songs.  Here, Darin takes a Sinatra signature song, gives it a gentle jazz combo backing and a subdued, beautiful performance that certainly deserved to be the climax of the double CD set.  Strangely, the other two songs from the shows released on the Aces Back to Back CD were reissued on The Milk Shows release.

The double CD release is, of course, wonderful to have, but it can also be rather frustrating.  Much of this is to do with technical issues such as the fake applause and, even worse, Bobby trying to interact with the fake applause.  It all becomes rather distracting, especially when each song only runs for a minute or so.  That said, presumably the applause was already on the tapes when they were found and so couldn’t be removed.  Less forgivable is where songs are joined together in such a way that Bobby is talking over his own singing,  perhaps saying “thank you” to the audience that isn’t there when he’s already started on the next number.  The same happens in reverse, where he’s introducing the next song while still finishing the previous one.  While one can understand why there was a desire to present each CD as one uninterrupted piece, there also seems little reason why songs couldn’t have been re-ordered so that these overlaps didn’t take place.  If that wasn’t possible, then a simple fade out and fade in would have worked better than the jarring mix of two songs together that occasionally happens.  Despite this, it should be reiterated that the sound quality of these tapes that were lost for more than thirty years is very good indeed.

Technical issues aside, the run of more than fifty songs in a space of just over an hour is almost exhausting, and with each song having the same instrumentation in its backing, they tend to run in together as if they were one long medley and thus suffer from becoming aural wallpaper.  Likewise, while Bobby is on very good form in places and gives some fine, nuanced performance, there are also moments where Darin the perfectionist is, seemingly, on holiday.  Back in 1960 in an article in Downbeat magazine, Gene Lees had commented on problems with Darin’s intonation in his early albums of standards.[2]  During The Milk Shows recordings this issue rises again, whether due to a tired voice or the sheer speed required to get everything down on tape.  However, we also need to remember that these were, in all likelihood, intended for a one-off broadcast not to be repeated – and certainly not to be listened to over and over again some forty years later.

What The Milk Shows undoubtedly show us is that Darin should have recorded with a jazz combo more than he did.  The one album that resulted from such a set-up, Winners, is Bobby at his very best, and one can imagine that, with a sensible amount of studio time, a number of the songs performed here could have been recorded in full performances for a follow-up album that would have been just as good.  That, sadly, didn’t happen, and so The Milk Shows CD release is the nearest we have, and for that we should be thankful.

[1] “Bobby Darin Show,” Capital Times, March 2, 1963, 3.

[2] Lees, “Bobby Darin and the Turn from Junk Music,” 16.